India has performed better in containing the spread of coronavirus than most of the developed nations with better health systems. The first case of coronavirus in India was reported on January 30 and shortly after, India began screening all the travellers and foreign nationals entering India from countries that had been affected by the outbreak. The Indian authorities knew they had a big task at hand as the spread of the virus in India with a population of 1.3 billion living in villages and cramped cities with sections of it lacking in proper hygiene is a disaster imminent to happen if not dealt properly.
PM Modi, on the evening of March 24, announced a 21-day total lockdown in the entire nation. The lockdown was appreciated as many health experts had felt the immediate need for it. One factor that probably the Prime Minister’s office had not considered to be included in the PMs announcement late in the night, was the state of uncertainty that the migrant and daily wage workers would be put in. The repercussions of important announcements made at 9 in the evening were seen yet again on March 28 when thousands of daily wage workers thronged the Anand Vihar bus stand when the state government made arrangements for the transportation of the migrant workers back to their home towns.
The efficacy of the lockdown was soon threatened by the discovery of new cases in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands where six people were tested positive for the coronavirus. The common link between the six people was an event they had attended in a mosque in Delhi’s Nizamuddin locality where a religious gathering “Markaz” of more than 4,500 people of a religious missionary group called Tablighi Jamaat took place. This set alarms among the Delhi authorities who later evacuated the remaining occupants of the mosque on March 29 and 30.
All the members of the Jamaat who were residing at the mosque were screened and kept in quarantine. The Jamaat was attended by Indian nationals from 20 states, many had returned to their home towns before the cases were discovered from the meeting. Tracing and testing those attendees was another major challenge for the authorities. As of the 6th of April 1,445 cases of 4,067 were linked to Tablighi Jamaat.
The Nizamuddin Markaz was attended by people from as many as 15 nations, a few countries of which already had an outbreak. The negligence of the Nizamuddin Markaz organizers and the Delhi Police does raise some serious questions.
Why had the Ministry of Affairs given visas to persons from those countries that were affected? How did the Delhi police fail to detect such a large gathering?
The Delhi government, in an order released on March 13, had prohibited the gathering of more than 200 people and in another order on March 16 had prohibited gatherings of more than 50 people. The Tablighi jamaat meet took place on the 12th and was supposed to conclude in a few days but with the lockdown, in place, many stayed in the mosque. The Jamaat had an adequate amount of time to stop the convention so the question arises.
Did the organizers elude to conform to the orders given by the Delhi Government? And if they had adhered could the situation have been avoided?
FIR’s have been filed against the organizers of the Markaz and an investigation is underway.
However, even with the rising cases of coronavirus in the nation, the long bred virus of hate and bigotry brewed by various media organizations in India did not fall back even at a time of crises. Many media houses began their hate propaganda and brought back the rhetoric of Muslims conspiring to spread the disease with tag lines such as “corona jihad” which they used to paint an entire section of the society.
This form of propaganda by a few media houses which surmise any conspiracy and even discuss in the prime time has become very normal to Indians that many even follow them religiously. If it was any other situation it would not have made much difference. It was surprising to see the continuation of the same divisive rhetoric in the media during a pandemic. Everyone needs to stick together at a time like this and fight it as responsible citizens and spreading conspiracies which could lead to ostracizing an entire community will only put everyone in danger.
What was not surprising was that there was also criticism of the media for an over-reporting the Nizamuddin event which was plausible considering that the minority was at the centre of it. This, I consider is counter-narrative which is only used to blame the collective media as exploiting an event to demean a particular person or section of society, and in this case the Tablighi Jamaat. A few people pointed out that the Kanika Kapoor case was not covered as much as the Tablighi Jamaat since it involved high profile persons.
The heading of an article posted by a reputable online media website. Notice the particular remark made on Rahul Kanwal (News director India today). Rahul Kanwal as far as the TV news is concerned had not reported about the incident with Islamophobic rhetoric or headlines.
If we were to compare between the two cases and the coverage they got, we can understand why the Markaz deserved the extensive coverage that it got from the national media. The Nizamuddin meeting was attended by people from 20 different states and by the time the authorities were made aware of the situation, who eventually started testing the attendees in the mosque in Nizamuddin, Many had travelled back to their cities and villages.
The police could not access any record or information from the venue about the attendees of the meeting. This meant that the cases could spike faster around the country and it would be harder to control. This posed a greater threat to the public than the upscale parties with guest lists that the Bollywood singer attended. Hence, it was the duty of the media to make the people aware by the repeated coverage of more relevant news.
Indeed, many communities, people of different nationalities, sexual orientations, and other marginalized sections are often misrepresented in the media. The media plays an important role in setting priorities and also how people think about government policies, agendas, wars, or how they perceive a group of people.
The rise in xenophobia, Islamophobia, homophobia, and many such kinds of bigotry and hatred towards a certain group of people are in some cases products of media and fake news. This, however, should not be used as a deterrent to target and restrict the media for covering and reporting incidents that include people of such communities. This can primarily be done by not blaming the media (certainly not all) for doing journalism.